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HAVEN COURSES · PRIVACY · 26 AUG 2026

Privacy Policy

Effective date 26 August 2026 · Last updated 26 August 2026. What Haven Courses collects, why, and what you can ask us to do about it.

Updated 26 Aug 2026Ages 13+Guardian consent under 18
01

Who we are

Haven Courses ("Haven", "we", "us") operates havencourses.com, a marketplace where independent teachers and students find each other and learn together.

Support — support@havencourses.com
Business enquiries — hello@havencourses.com
Postal address — Haven has no public postal address. All contact is by email.
Legal entity — Haven Courses is operated by an individual. There is no registered company entity at this time.
02

Who can use Haven

Haven is for people aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If we learn we have, we delete it.

Users under 18 need a parent or guardian to agree to our Terms and this Policy on their behalf before they can use Haven.

Both teachers and students on Haven may be under 18. That shapes how we handle data, and the “Users under 18” section explains what we do differently.
03

What we collect

Some of this you give us. Some is collected automatically to keep the service running and secure.

Collected automatically — device and browser type, IP address, pages viewed, approximate location derived from IP, and error diagnostics.
DATA
WHEN
WHY
Name, email, password
Signing up
To create and secure your account
Date of birth
Signing up
To apply age-appropriate protections
Profile details, biography, subjects
Building a profile
To show you in the catalogue
Profile photo, course thumbnails
If you upload them
To display on your profile and courses
Course content — lessons, materials
Teaching
To deliver courses to enrolled students
Messages
Using Haven Chat
To deliver them, and for safety
Guardian contact details
Onboarding, if under 18
For consent and safety oversight
04

Identity verification

Teachers must verify their identity before publishing a course or messaging students. We use Persona (Persona Identifiers, Inc.) to do this.

When you verify, Persona — not Haven — collects a government-issued identity document, a photograph of your face which may be compared against the document, and information derived from these to confirm the document is genuine.

Persona processes this data as an independent controller under its own privacy policy: withpersona.com/legal/privacy-policy

Haven never receives or stores your identity document or your verification photograph. We receive only the outcome: pass or fail, an age band, whether you are an adult, and a reference number.
05

Why we use your information

To operate your account and deliver courses
To match students with teachers
To verify that teachers are who they say they are
To keep people safe, particularly younger users
To respond to support requests
To take payment for paid courses and pay teachers out
We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your data to train machine learning models, and we do not allow our service providers to use it for that purpose.
06

Messages, and how we monitor them

Haven Chat exists so students and their teachers can communicate about coursework. You should understand exactly how it works before you use it.

We automatically scan messages for phone numbers, email addresses and links to external sites. Messages containing these are flagged for review by our moderation team. We do this because most harm on learning platforms happens after a conversation moves somewhere we cannot see.

We keep messages even after you delete them. Deleting removes it from your view; we retain the underlying record so we can investigate reports and comply with legal obligations.
Moderators can read reported and flagged conversations. They do not browse messages at random.
Guardians of users under 18 may request their child’s conversation history by contacting support@havencourses.com. We verify the guardian relationship first.
07

Who we share information with

We share only what is necessary, and only with these providers.

We also share information where the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety, or in connection with a sale or reorganisation of the business.
Public by default — teacher profiles, course listings and approved thumbnails are visible to anyone. Teachers under 18 are shown by first name and last initial only.
PROVIDER
PURPOSE
DATA
Supabase
Database and authentication
Account and platform data
Vercel
Hosting
Requests and diagnostics
Persona
Identity verification
Verification data
Resend
Sending account emails
Name, email address
EShipX
Payments and payouts
Transaction data
08

Where your data is held

Haven’s database and hosting are located in the United States. Haven does not currently serve users in the UK or EU, so no international transfer mechanism applies. If that changes, this section will be updated before those users can sign up.

09

Users under 18

A parent or guardian must consent before the account is used.
Public profiles show first name and last initial only; photos are optional and never displayed by default.
Profile photos and course thumbnails are reviewed before they appear publicly.
A linked guardian may request account information and conversation history.
Teachers under 18 may earn on Haven, but payouts are made to a verified guardian.
Guardian links are created by Haven staff after we verify the relationship. We do not use self-service invitation links, because a link that grants access to a child’s messages could be passed to the wrong person.
10

How long we keep things

RECORD
RETENTION
Account data
While your account is open, then 7 days after closure
Messages
7 days — retained beyond deletion, see the messages section
Verification outcomes
7 days
Moderation and safety records
7 days — longer where a report was made
Diagnostics
7 days
11

Your rights

Email support@havencourses.com and we will respond within 3 to 5 days. You can ask us to:

Give you a copy of your information
Correct anything inaccurate
Delete your account and associated data
Restrict or object to certain processing
Export your data in a portable format
Some information we must keep — safety records and anything required by law — even after an account is deleted.
12

Security

We protect your data with encryption in transit, database-level access controls that prevent one user’s data from being reachable by another, restricted staff access, and audit logging of administrative actions.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects you, we will notify you as required by law.

13

Cookies and changes

We use cookies that are strictly necessary — keeping you signed in and securing your session. We do not use analytics or advertising cookies.

We will post any changes to this policy here and update the date above. For significant changes we will email you before they take effect.

Ask us about your data
Copies, corrections, deletion and export requests all start with one email. We answer within 3 to 5 days.
support@havencourses.com